THE PRINCESS

1. So closed our tale, of which I give you all
2. The random scheme as wildly as it rose:
3. The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased
4. There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,
5. 'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me,
6. 'What, if you drest it up poetically!'
7. So pray'd the men, the women: I gave assent:
8. Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven
9. Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
10. The men required that I should give throughout
11. The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,
12. With which we banter'd little Lilia first:
13. The women--and perhaps they felt their power,
14. For something in the ballads which they sang,
15. Or in their silent influence as they sat,
16. Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque,
17. And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close--
18. They hated banter, wish'd for something real,
19. A gallant fight, a noble princess--why
20. Not make her true-heroic--true-sublime?
21. Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
22. Which yet with such a framework scarce could be.
23. Then rose a little feud betwixt the two,
24. Betwixt the mockers and the realists:
25. And I, betwixt them both, to please them both,
26. And yet to give the story as it rose,
27. I moved as in a strange diagonal,
28. And maybe neither pleased myself nor them.

29. But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part
30. In our dispute: the sequel of the tale
31. Had touch'd her; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass,
32. She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt
33. A showery glance upon her aunt, and said,
34. 'You-tell us what we are'--who might have told,
35. For she was cramm'd with theories out of books,
36. But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed
37. At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now,
38. To take their leave, about the garden rails

39. So I and some went out to these; we climb'd
40. The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw
41. The happy valleys, half in light, and half
42. Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace;
43. Grey halls alone among their massive groves;
44. Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower
45. Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat;
46. The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas;
47. A red sail, or a white; and far beyond,
48. Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.

49. 'Look there, a garden!' said my college friend,
50. The Tory member's elder son, 'and there!
51. God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,
52. And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,
53. A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled--
54. Some sense of duty, something of a faith,
55. Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made.
56. Some patient force to change them when we will,
57. Some civic manhood firm against the crowd--
58. But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,
59. The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,
60. The king is scared, the soldier will not fight,
61. The little boys begin to shoot and stab,
62. A kingdom topples over with a shriek
63. Like an old woman, and down rolls the world
64. In mock heroics stranger than our own;
65. Revolts, republics, revolutions, most
66. No graver than a schoolboys' barring out;
67. Too comic for the solemn things they are,
68. Too solemn for the comic touches in them,
69. Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream
70. As some of theirs--God bless the narrow seas!
71. I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.'

72. 'Have patience,' I replied, 'ourselves are full
73. Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams
74. Are but the needful preludes of the truth:
75. For me, the genial day, the happy crowd,
76. The sport half-science, fill me with a faith.
77. This fine old world of ours is but a child
78. Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time
79. To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides.

80. In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails,
81. And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood,
82. Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks,
83. Among six boys, head under head, and look'd
84. No little lily-banded Baronet he,
85. A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman,
86. A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep,
87. A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
88. A patron of some thirty charities,
89. A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
90. A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none;
91. Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn;
92. Now shaking bands with him, now him, of those
93. That stood the nearest--now address'd to speech--
94. Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed
95. Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year
96. To follow: a shout rose again, and made
97. The long line of the approaching rookery swerve
98. From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer
99. From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang
100. Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout
101. More joyful than the city-roar that hails
102. Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs
103. Give up their parks some dozen times a year
104. To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried,
105. I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away.

106. But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,
107. So much the gathering darkness charm'd: we sat
108. But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,
109. Perchance upon the future man: the walls
110. Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd.
111. And gradually the powers of the night,
112. That range above the region of the wind,
113. Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up
114. Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds,
115. Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

116. Last little Lilia, rising quietly,
117. Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph
118. From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.

Last updated October 24, 1997